Judge Shauck’s Tribute to the Late President McKinley

     The tribute paid to President McKinley by Judge John A. Schauck of the supreme court, in Trinity church, Columbus, last Sunday, is considered by many people to be one of the finest memorial addresses ever given in Columbus. Judge Shauck said:
     The commendations of this day of sorrow are for the dead. Its admonitions are for the living. The blood of martyrs is not the seed of the church alone. Throughout the ages it has quickened every step of advancing civilization. A day radiant with hope and filled with pledges of good will [sic] has been turned to humiliation and sorrow by a stupendous crime from which no conceivable circumstance of aggravation is absent. A most knightly man has fallen in his prime. A studious youth, he laid the foundations for great usefulness. A young and valorous soldier of the republic, he won recognition and honor. A statesman in high places, he met their varied requirements with conspicuous fidelity and intelligence. By tireless devotion to aged mother and invalid wife he gave to the domestic virtues an enlarged definition. In the political arena he taught us to use the gloved instead of the armed hand. No adversary’s position was so abused as to prompt him to ridicule, and he held no audience in such light esteem as to attempt to move it by epithets.
     He illustrated the equality of our opportunities by rising from the lowest station to the highest; and by his simple and contented life he rebuked not only those who barter health and character for great riches, but also those who envy them.
     In the orderly mode appointed he was chosen by seventy millions of people to be for the time alloted [sic] their representative among the nations of the earth and the repository of their executive power. His selection was not made from sudden impulse started by catching speech or dramatic action. On the contrary, no other choice to that exalted station was ever made with so much deliberation or with such full knowledge of the qualities of the person chosen. For eight years the judg[ment of?] his [145][146] fellows had favored him so strongly that nothing but his own great influence could prevent his selection. That influence he had exercised irresistibly because of his unselfish estimate of the merits of others and of his high sense of his own duty toward them. The day will be evil when men cease to admire that brief address to a convention apparently intent upon selecting him in which he closed a statement of the considerations of honor which bound him to the support of another with the thrilling words: “I do not request—I demand, that no delegate, who would not cast reflection upon me, shall cast a ballot for me.”
     For eight years he had stood forth conspicuously for the criticism of political rivals and political adversaries and for the study of all men. He was an enigma of those only who could not readily understand how so much kindness and gentleness could be combined with courage and firmness. With full knowledge of his character and qualities we chose him in a manner which left no doubt concerning his title—if such doubt could palliate crime. Confronted with grave and unexpected responsibilities he met them with courage, intelligence and kindness which evoked the admiration of the civilized world. The shouts of victory and the commendations of mankind brought him no elation, and as more and more power was placed in his hands he continued to show that “mercy is mightiest in the mightiest.”
     His first term having closed we chose him for a second, and with a voice which left no doubt of our increased affection for him and confidence in his leadership. And then he was wickedly and treacherously murdered—not because it was believed he had ever wronged any man, but because we had chosen him, because he was the most conspicuous representative of public order in our land. In the presence of death the kindness of his nature was manifest. The appreciation of what was due to his great office did not forsake him, and he demanded that the hand of vengeance should be stayed and that his pitiless assailant should receive only that punishment which the law had previously appointed. Shall we who have witnessed such a death ever witness another mob?
     A generation ago we asserted a demand against England for damages resulting from her negligent failure to perform the duty imposed upon her by the law among nations to prevent the arming of privateers and their issuing from her ports to prey upon our commerce. The duty implied in our demand was admitted. The negligent failure to perform it was denied. The question was decided in our favor by distinguished arbitrators and the damages awarded were paid. Nearly continuously from that time until now we have tolerated within our borders, the schools of anarchy and their kindergartens—the schools of socialism. The destruction of public order and the murder of rulers have been openly taught. Processions have marched the streets of cities bearing flags alien and hostile, not only to our government but to all others. Officers have been murdered in pursuance of th[?]se teachings and in the execution of conspiracies consistent with them. Some of those undergoing imprisonment for such overt acts of murder were pardoned by a governor of one of the states, and that official has since been received with honor and tolerated as a teacher of political sociology. The natural results of such toleration and encouragement have followed with bewildering rapidity. A few months ago the members of this association compassed the murder of the head of the existing government of Italy, and pursuant to their appointment a wretch left our shores to execute their base decree, and he executed it. The foul deed filled pitying men with horror which only encouraged the teachers of crime. The propagation of their doctrines continued and we now contemplate their latest achievement.
     Perhaps we may not hope for the cessation of homicides resulting from such promptings as spring spontaneously in depraved hearts and disordered minds, but the mentally and morally weak are prone to act upon suggestion, and the toleration of schools of criminal suggestion is a national disgrace. That the foul deed we now contemplate was due to such suggestion is made clear by the assassin’s associations and his declarations. It is the lesson of history that public disorder is the tyrant’s welcome and that liberty is never secure except when its excesses are restrained and prevented by public law. Our inability to appreciate this lesson is in part an unhappy inheritance from those of our ancestors who unduly admired the excesses of the French revolution. The inheritance has been largely increased by demagogues and by unripe teachers of political science. The penalty which England paid for her neglect of duty was told in paltry dollars. But national life, public order and the civilization which it enshrines are more than commerce; and the penalty we pay for our neglect of duty is the life of our foremost and most beloved citizen.
     Three days ago, amid the lamentations of all the good, we laid to rest the familiar form of this kind and gentle man, this exponent of private and public virtues, this lover of his land and his kind, this hero in life and death, this splendid victim of our fatal honors. He sleeps at Canton, but all over the land cenotaphs to his memory rise in millions of hearts; and it will be well for our future if they bear the inscription: “Beneath the orderly and divinely appointed procession of the stars there is no place for anarchy.”